David’s Story
My name’s David. Up front declaration, I now work for Alcohol Focus Scotland. However, I’m also in recovery from problematic alcohol use. I’ve been sober since 16th December 2015. I’ve been attending a mutual aid recovery fellowship for the past 8.5 years.
Being sober so long, and having been in recovery, attended counselling on few occasions, and being a regular stalker of the self-help sections of book shops – I have a lot of deep insights into why I started drinking, and more importantly, how and why my drinking became so problematic.
Childhood trauma and the minority stress that comes with being gay in a world built for straight people certainly played major roles in how my drinking almost immediately became severely problematic and got progressively worse down the years. Self-medication for trauma and poor mental health definitely became a big part of the story.
But I didn’t start drinking aged 17 conscious of the fact that it would help with stress/anxiety or depression – I barely even understood I was experiencing those things. I started drinking because that’s just what you do in Scotland when you hit that age (or at least it was, young people aren’t doing it so much anymore). Drinking alcohol was a rite of passage to adulthood. You’d have been seen as weird or boring if you didn’t drink (you still can be!).
So really, in the first instance it was more about social and peer pressure and expectations. Like so many people, I just never even considered that I wouldn’t drink alcohol.
The impact alcohol had on me was utterly catastrophic.
I was never, and never did become a daily drinker. But on a given day when I started I couldn’t stop. One was too many and too many was never enough. I only stopped when I’d managed to get home and pass out. I tended to get drunk quickly and stay drunk for a long time.
I often experienced black outs. Or what Robin Williams called ‘sleep walking with activities’ – or ‘your conscience going into a witness protection programme’. My personality changed sharply, sometimes with little warning, sometimes dependent on my mood. I’m normally a friendly and kind and quite nice person – but when I’d get drunk I’d become morose and/or aggressive. I sustained physical injuries, got into fights, spent nights in police cells, missed work, came into work hungover (or possibly still drunk). I spent thousands of pounds of my own and other people’s money. I behaved abominably towards some of my friends and family and I harmed some of them deeply in a lot of ways. As Robin Williams also said, ‘I violated my standards faster than I could lower them’. Eventually I got fired from a really good job. I kept drinking for a few months after until I reached a point where I was so physically and mentally sick, I knew I either had to stop drinking or I’d more than likely get drunk one night and take my own life.
When I think of the harm I did to myself and others, it gets me down. I’ll never fully recover or regain what I lost because of my drinking. What I lost is impossible to quantify.
At that time, I remember my mum telling me I looked grey. I was so absolutely miserable and sick. A friend phoned me and told me I had to get sober this time. I said to him, ‘I know. But it’ll be really hard.” He replied: “Is it gonna be any harder than what you’re doing now?” It was a penny drop moment, and a few days later I decided that was it – I would have one last night of drinking and then it was over. And I’ve never had a drink since.
I didn’t start drinking at first because I thought, ‘Oh I hear that alcohol stuff is really good for treating anxiety/depression, social anxiety or childhood trauma’ and decided to self medicate using it. Though it did become a major factor in my drinking.
I started and continued because it was a ludicrous idea to think that you wouldn’t drink in this country. That’s what you do when you’re an adult. And as soon as possible. Alcohol is cool. Alcohol is fun. Alcohol is grown up. Drinking is social. All of these messages come at you from everywhere – friends, family, TV, social media, films, books, adverts, pubs, even greetings cards – you name it.
Conversely, being sober isn’t cool or it’s boring. Or it’s weird. Equally all of these messages come at you from friends, family, social media, TV, films, adverts etc.
Never mind that, alcohol is literally everywhere. If you live in a big city in the UK it’s on every street corner and the number of places selling alcohol only seems to increase. Pubs, clubs, supermarkets, corner shops, off licences, bowling alleys and now even cinemas.
It’s a wonder anyone in recovery manages to stay sober when you can’t walk 50 yards without some form of cue to drink.
I feel like I was one of those people who sort of spontaneously went into remission if you will. I got to a point where I was so ill and so miserable that it felt like I was at a pretty pivotal crossroads. Either keep drinking and probably kill myself in the very near future. Or stop and live. And on balance I preferred to live – even if I have always found life difficult. Kind of like that quote in the Shawshank Redemption, ‘You either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’. I chose to get busy living. I seemed to still have the choice, just about.
Though I will say I never chose to end up with the problems I had. They just kinda happened. And very quickly I lost control. To this day I don’t really understand how I did manage to regain that bit of control. I don’t believe in miracles or god, but in whatever way you can have a secular miracle – me getting sober was it.
And getting busy has been a big part of how I stay sober. I’ve thrown myself into all kinds of hobbies and interests. I thought about what used to bring me pleasure as a child before I started drinking and started doing those things more – e.g. amateur drama, drawing, painting, playing games, playing music etc.
Attending mutual aid meetings and meeting other people who’ve had similar problems and managed to overcome them and learning what they do to stay sober or manage the traumas and stresses of life without drinking has also been a huge help. My family and a few close, trusted friends have also played a massive role.
In terms of what I think would reduce alcohol harm on a wider scale, I definitely think we need a cultural shift in terms of the acceptability of alcohol. My 91 year old gran always says of smoking, when she was young, you were considered odd if you didn’t smoke.
Well it’s much the same with alcohol and drinking now. We successfully changed the culture around smoking by doing a whole range of things including awareness raising campaigns about the dangers of smoking, banning tobacco advertising, health warning labels on cigarette packets, introducing plain packaging and reducing the number of places it was acceptable or legal to smoke.
And that didn’t just create a lot of angry inconvenienced smokers, it changed people’s attitudes towards smoking entirely too. So I’d say, take what we did with cigarettes and do it with alcohol.
I get that nicotine and alcohol are different drugs that do different things, and alcohol probably has played a historic role in social bonding etc. for millennia. But does it have to? Do we have to accept that narrative? Why are we the only social animals who need a few drinks to feel comfortable in our own skin or with each other? Maybe if we are, we’ve got some really big problems.
We could also, you know, get serious about reducing inequality, provide adequate mental health services, invest heavily in preventative healthcare and end LGBTphobia – but maybe I’m being too ambitious!
